“Tigers Blood” – Waxahatchee

Album: Tigers Blood

Artist: Waxahatchee

Year: 2024

Genre: Alternative Country

Grade: A-

With Tigers Blood, Waxahatchee a.k.a. singer/songwriter Katie Crutchfield has fully made the transition from slacker indie rocker to unabashed Americana songstress. Usually, a change like this comes from the other direction (think Wilco or Angel Olsen going from alt-country to plain old alt), but Crutchfield has turned an unlikely switch into a natural next step. With Tigers Blood and St. Cloud before it, Waxahatchee is now one of the best country acts around, however unlikely that might’ve seemed 10 years prior.

Gone are the fuzzy guitars of Cerulean Salt and Ivy Tripp; make way for banjos, pedal steel and guest appearances by Wednesday guitarist MJ Lenderman. The twangy songs of Tigers Blood feature Crutchfield at her most free and unrestrained — this is the music she was always meant to make. It’s an album painted in bright summery colors, with a rollicking alt-country sound perfectly befitting of her confessional songwriting. Even though the subject matter chronicles failed relationships and painful break-ups, Tigers Blood is a joyful catharsis rather than a depressive rumination.

As a lyricist, Crutchfield continues to be rich in rhyme and metaphor, always entertaining in what she has to say. But perhaps the greatest joy of Tigers Blood is listening to the surprising vocal melodies, which she bends around the imperfections of her drawling Alabama accent, now more distinctly Southern than ever. For instance, “Bored” is a tour-de-force of wordplay and delivery, with rhymes being forced to fit together via lovable mispronunciations (“cup” to “love” to “of”). Then again, every single song is filled with these aural pleasures, and the hi-fi mixing does a nice job of emphasizing her double-tracked falsetto and putting the vocals way out front.

As a songwriter, Crutchfield is as solid as ever, knowing that even the folksiest songs benefit from a strong beat (that’s Spencer Tweedy on drums, the son of Wilco frontman Jeff). Likewise, the long buildups are well-placed and purifying (Spencer’s drums don’t break through until two minutes into the gorgeous opener “3 Sisters“). And while Lenderman’s Neil Young-influenced guitar solos are a distinct part of the mid-2020s indie zeitgeist, Crutchfield puts all the elements together in a manner that is effortlessly original and supremely confident.

She’s improved her craft with every album and has become a critical darling in the process. On Tigers Blood, Waxahatchee does it again. She’s already had a fine showing as a rocker, but what us critics never could’ve predicted is that she’d succeed in conquering country music as well.

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